Module 3: Useful Steps
Module three proved useful and practical. I'm afraid this post won't be very colorful because the module was quite businesslike for me. I now feel
comfortable doing many basic things in moodle, and I am confident I can figure
the rest of it out without too much trouble. During module two, I played with
the applications to which Rick drew our attention. In module three, I decided
to start putting together a real course – or at least real elements of a course
I might teach. Specifically, I acted as though my module three work was an
attempt to try to adapt the beginning of a history course I taught last summer to the online environment.
I redid some stuff from module 2 to make it work in the new course and shifted
things around accordingly.
I think I can imagine a basic rhythm for a history course
centered around readings and students posing discussion questions and
responding to discussion questions on forums. I would grade and comment on
their posts. Then they would read additional, more specialized readings, or
watch part of a film or documentary, or view a piece of art or a photograph and
work in groups to produce interpretations of these materials – possibly as
group wikis. At the end of each module, students would then upload responses in
short-answer form (a couple paragraphs) to a paper prompt. The last would allow
them to work on marshaling evidence and writing formally. In the online environment
(though also in F2F settings too), I would like to dispense with big exams. I
would like to replace these with some sort of comprehensive group project. I think such
a project needs to be there in order to allow students to take advantage of
their online community (our readings seem to emphasize the importance of this)
and learn from each other. But I am mulling over what this project should be.
This is as far as I have gotten at this point.
I think I am at the point that I need to see some other
examples of good online courses in the field of history (or the humanities
broadly). I need some fresh ideas. I fear I am too bound up in “adapting” what
I have done before. And then, I know that I will need some outside critique of
what I do before I launch it. All in all, I feel like I am progressing but I am
missing some pieces still.
Nick, I'm all for ditching the big exams with online courses. I could envision VoiceThread being used very effectively in a history course. You can have various media, around which discussions could ensue. Did you know that you can also annotate on the media while you record your audio or video?
ReplyDeleteI wish Trinity had some good online history courses for you to look at, but we're just not to that point yet. We may have to rely on you to develop these for other faculty to learn from.
I think many fields would benefit from dispensing with big exams, regardless of the course format.
ReplyDeleteAs for seeing examples, I wonder if it would be helpful to examine open courses that are currently available... a number of well-respected universities have online courses that could serve as a model, like MIT (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/history/) and Yale (http://oyc.yale.edu/courses). (I Googled online courses history to find those, and there's definitely more!) Obviously that wouldn't be much help with how to set up Moodle well, but it might give you some ideas for multimedia, activities, overall structure, and so forth.
But I think starting with what you've done before and then working to integrate different tools can be a valid way to approach it. That's how I've had to approach doing class sessions about library resources, and sure, the first ones weren't fantastic, but they got the job done. Cultivating an awareness of new tools/activities/methods and being willing to reflect on how it went and where I can improve is how I've adjusted my own style, and I think that same basic idea can apply to online courses as well. Plus, in semester-long class, you have more opportunity to get feedback from the students on what they think is going well/seems most effective from their side of things.
I can definitely see how an online history course set up this way would work. I really like the idea of project rather than a test. I was a part of an online course once as a supplemental instructor, and they had a normal exam. This required all the students to get proctors for a paper exam since the online exam may have resulted in cheating. This was a real burden for some students. I like the idea of taking away the issue of cheating or finding a way to administer a test to a class that doesn't meet.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can find a good group project. Some of the projects that I have done that I really enjoyed focused on me creating my own version of a historical event (like creating your own World's Fair).
One suggestion I have is that you could even have students create a voicethread together as part of the project. Have then present through voicethread. They can create it over time and go back and forth between each other. SO you would get a presentation like it was a F2F class while still being online.